The 2020 European Football Championship (Euro 2020) is to be postponed until 2021.
The tournament will now take place across June and July next year.
“Football is an uplifting and powerful force in society. The thought of celebrating a pan-European festival of football in empty stadia, with deserted fan zones while the continent sits at home in isolation, is a joyless one and one we could not accept to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the competition,” said UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin.
Commercial broadcaster ITV, which shares the UK rights with BBC, said the direct impact will be to reduce ITV’s schedule costs in 2020 by £40m to £50m, including the cost of replacement programming.
However, there would be no loss in sponsorship revenue because the tournament is pre-sponsored.
The 60th anniversary competition was scheduled to be run across a number of countries with the final at Wembley Stadium.
